Viktor

source: juerglehni

Viktor is a scalable, robotic chalk-drawing machine designed for large surfaces (up to 20 x 20 meters), driven by the same geometric principles that helped create Hektor.

As with Hektor, the interest was in the creation of a post-industrial device that is not striving to be perfect, but instead has a distinct character in its gestures when executing its line drawing onto walls.

Unlike Hektor, Viktor consists of four motors and belts instead of only two, allowing it to work on larger surfaces, to better position the tool and to apply just enough presure to leave a mark on the surface.

Chalk was chosen as an ephemeral contrast to Hektorʼs very permanent spray paint, giving the device its own character and voice.

Due to these choices, the system lends itself for use as a platform for lectures and performances.

As an example, throughout the duration of the exhibition A Recent History of Writing and Drawing at the Institute of Contemporary Arts in London, guests were invited to perform with Viktor on seven Thursday evenings. Curated by Emily King, these events expanded on the themes of the incidental poetry and spare capacity of technology, placing the exhibits in the gallery in a context that goes beyond its four walls.

An alternative tool head was created to hold spray cans instead of pieces of chalk, conceived for external use on whole buildings.
source: juerglehni

Jürg Lehni works collaboratively across disciplines, dealing with the nuances of technology, tools and the human condition. His works often take the form of platforms and scenarios for production, such as the drawing machines Hektor, Rita and Viktor, as well as software-based structures and frameworks, including Paper.js, Scriptographer and Vectorama.org.

Lehni has shown work internationally in group and solo shows at the MoMA New York, Walker Art Center, Centre Pompidou, Institute of Contemporary Arts London, Victoria and Albert Museum, Design Museum London, Kunsthalle St. Gallen, etc. In 2014, his work Viktor has been acquired by the SFMOMA for their collection.

He runs an independent practise in Switzerland since 2002, but has lived and worked in many places around the globe: As the Arts Council Visiting Professor at the UCLA Department of Design Media Arts in 2012 ~ 2013, running his own studio in London in 2008 ~ 2011, on a Swiss Design Awards residency in New York in 2007, and on a research residency at Sony SET Studio in Tokyo in 2006.
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source: brimstonesandtreaclewordpress

Earlier in the week we found this video featuring the handiwork of Viktor, a large scale wall-drawing image making tool. The machine is an amalgam of digital and mechanical technologies, becoming a collage of tools, all of which were invented for other general and specific uses. Viktor is a robotic chalk-drawing machine created in 2008 by the designers Jürg Lehni and Alex Rich, who share a fascination with the role of technology in design and are intent on exploring this interest through the creation of new tools and machines. Jürg Lehni states, “I wanted to make new things with new meanings using what I knew already,” he says. “I wanted to bring back the spirit of printing or publishing or design from the past, but using modern technology. My computers became my working tools, my brushes and paint.”

Viktor is conceived as being far from a closed mechanical device – a black box between creative impulse and output – but rather is described as the ‘nuanced interaction between the user and the technologies of communication’. In a recent interview Jürg Lehni explained his perspective on technology. ‘we are all being sold proprietary software 
all the time and being told how to use it in a prescriptive
 way, but it is possible, if we know how, to bend it to our
 own will and to use it in a different way. The capacity of this software is not anticipated by us and it often has poetic potential.’

The exhibit demonstrates this 
‘poetic potential’ by injecting a degree of humanity into the mechanical nature of 
machines. Viktor works by covering an entire blackboard-painted gallery wall reproducing texts and drawings that elaborate on the themes of the show which is derived from talks and workshops.

The video shows Viktor illustrating the lecture “5000 Years of Chairs” by Michael Marriott about the development of the world through advances in chair making technologies spanning five thousand years. The talk was held on the occasion of the exhibition “A Recent History of Writing & Drawing” by Jürg Lehni & Alex Rich, Institute of Contemporary Arts, London, 2008.
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source: lespressesdureel

Jürg Lehni (né en 1978 à Lucerne, vit et travaille à Londres) est designer indépendant, développeur et artiste. Son travail s’origine dans une réflexion sur l’outil informatique, ses utilisations et les adaptations que la technologie demande. Il a développé de nombreux projets en collaborations, avec des personnalités d’horizons divers (graphistes, plasticiens, typographes, ingénieurs…).
Alex Rich (né en 1977 à Caerphilly, vit et travaille à Londres) s’intéresse au design dans une perspective multidisciplinaire. Il a développé avec Jürg Lehni une réflexion historique et culturelle, ainsi qu’un projet d’exposition, autour des machines à dessiner conçues par le jeune artiste, qu’il a découvertes en tant que membre de son jury à l’ECAL en 2002.